BNP Paribas AM: Delivering on sustainability: a licence to do business in the 21st century

Amid a growing chorus of stakeholders keen on sustainability – ranging from investors to increasingly environmentally and socially aware consumers – more and more entrepreneurs are exploring solutions that are actually sustainable and responsible.

They are incorporating sustainability into companies’ DNA and strategies, because they realise that this approach not only makes business sense, but also has the great potential of finding favour with consumers and being endorsed by parties including regulators, civil society and investors big and small.

More than lip service

These days, achieving sustainability – not merely ‘green washing’, but actually delivering – is an important cog in many business processes and in many products. It has become one of the ground rules and it is as much part of a licence to do business as is, for example, a trading permit or a management degree. This is especially so in a world marked on the one hand by, for example, a seemingly growing incidence of extreme weather phenomena seen as harbingers of climate change and on the other, by a heightened awareness of the urgent need for local, national and multilateral action.